Weed legalization can't seem to fix racial gaps in drug arrests

For all of the health and fiscal benefits of marijuana legalization, the racial gap in weed arrests isn't budging.

Black Americans who live in states where recreational marijuana has been legalized are still being arrested for offenses related to the substance at higher rates than other groups, according to a recent data analysis from the Washington Post that focused on Washington state and Colorado.

Even though overall drug arrests dropped 90% in Washington and 60% in Colorado between 2008 and 2014, the post-legalization arrest rates for blacks were still double the rate for nonblacks, according to Mike Males, a senior research fellow at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.